ARTES

CFP: Questioning the concept of Mudejar Architecture

Mudejar Roof, Teruel Cathedral (Photo credit: Jose Luis Filpo Cabana. Licensed under GFDL via Wikimedia Commons)

QUESTIONING THE CONCEPT OF MUDÉJAR ARCHITECTURE

Society of Architectural Historians
SAH 69th Annual International Conference, Pasadena/LA, April 6 – 10, 2016
Call for Papers: Questioning the concept of Mudejar Architecture
Deadline: Jun 9, 2015

Medieval exchange processes between Muslim Spain, the northern Christian kingdoms and the Sephardic Jews created a specific building style in the Iberian Peninsula. On the occasion of his inaugural lecture El estilo Mudéjar en arquitectura, held in 1859 at the Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, José Amador de los Ríos named this specific style Mudéjar, a term used in the academic literature till this day. The transmission of a historical term designating a specific population group (i.e. Muslims in Christian territories) into architectural history induces a terminological grey area. When did the term Mudéjar appear in historical records, i.e., was it already used in Pre-Modern times as a category for demarcation? Where shall we draw the frontiers between Islamic, Mudéjar, Christian and Jewish Architecture? Which are the determining factors that feature a building as Mudéjar? Is it the confession of the patron or that of the craftsman, the functional aspect (church, synagogue) or the stylistic feature that permits a classification? How do we relate a Mudéjar building to Mudéjar population? What is the role of the patron and/or the craftsman in modifying Islamic patterns into a Christian or Jewish language?
The interdisciplinary approach (Art History/Historical Sciences) of the session will allow a critical debate on the concept of Mudéjar Architecture, which has recently been questioned in the work Under the influence: Questioning the Comparative in Medieval Castile (Leiden, 2005). We encourage the submission of specific case studies that will permit to simultaneously highlight the complexity of cross-border processes and question the compatibility with the current field boundaries, while emphasizing the significance of the Iberian Peninsula as a cultural contact zone within the current international globalization discourse.
Session chairs: Francine Giese, University of Zurich; francine.giese@khist.uzh.ch; and Ana Echevarría Arsuaga, UNED Madrid; aechevarria@geo.uned.es.
Please submit abstracts (no more than 300 words) via the online submission portal by June 9, 2015.

SKIN: A ONE DAY SYMPOSIUM ON HISPANIC ARTS AND CULTURES. Friday, 22nd May 2015

SKIN: A ONE DAY SYMPOSIUM ON HISPANIC ARTS AND CULTURES

Institute of Advanced Study, Palace Green, Durham Friday, 22 May 2015

To register for the event, please email the organizer (a.m.beresford@durham.ac.uk) indicating if you have any special dietary requirements. There is no registration fee, but all participants will be asked to complete a short impact questionnaire. There are a maximum of 20 places available.

09.30–09.40 Welcome and Introduction

09.40–10.20 Edward Payne (Meadows Museum, Dallas), ‘Skin as Subject and Surface: Flaying in the Art of Ribera, Carreño and Giordano’

10.20–11.00 Yarí Pérez Marín (Durham University), ‘Skin and Markers of Disease in the Medical Literature of Early Colonial Mexico’

11.00–11.20 Coffee

11.20–12.00 Andy Beresford (Durham University), ‘The Flaying of St Bartholomew in Early Spanish Altarpieces’

12.00–12.40 Tom Nickson (Courtauld Institute), ‘“Stuffed in the most artistic manner”: The Sacred Made Real in Medieval Castile’

12.40–13.40 Lunch

13.40–14.20 Bogdan Cornea (University of York), ‘Skin and Surfaces in Jusepe de Ribera’s Paintings of Flaying’

14.20–15.00 Lesley Twomey (Northumbria University), ‘Decorated Exteriors and Resplendent Interiors: The Ark, the Tabernacle, and the Reliquary as Figures for the Virgin Mary’s Physical and Spiritual Beauty in Late-Medieval Spain’

15.00–15.40 Piers Baker-Bates Open University), ‘Sebastiano del Piombo: The Suffering Skin between Italy and Spain’

15.40–16.00 Tea

16.00–17.00 Round Table Discussion

Re-envisioning the Virgin Mary: Colonial Painting from South America: Austin, Texas

Exhibition:
Re-envisioning the Virgin Mary: Colonial Painting from South America
Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, Texas
Two-part exhibition:
(1) 20 September 2014 – 14 June 2015
(2) July 2015 – 2016

A two-part exhibition, the first phase of which features seven paintings on loan from two of the United States’ most distinguished collections of colonial South American art: the Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Collection, New York, and the Marilynn and Carl Thoma Collection, Chicago.
The paintings, created in what are now the countries of Peru and Venezuela, represent devotions to Mary that were popular in Spain in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and brought to the Americas by Spanish colonists.

In phase two, which opens in July 2015, the works reflect a different narrative with uniquely South American elements: the Virgin in the New World. Included are paintings by masters Antonio José Landaeta and Juan Pedro López, and several works by unidentified artists.

Genaro Pérez Villaamil, Madrid

Exhibition: Views of Historic Monuments in Spanish Cities: The Romantic Painter Genaro Pérez Villaamil
(Vistas monumentales de ciudades españolas. El pintor romántico Genaro Pérez Villaamil)

Room 60 Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid
17 December 2014 – 6 September 2015

Curated by Javier Barón, this exhibition includes Villaamil’s large Diptych, formed from 42 individual scenes painted on tin-plates between 1835 and 1839, by the 19th-century landscape and architectural painter, some of whose work was influenced by British artists such as David Roberts and Turner.

The Diptych anticipates Villaamil’s later focus on the depiction of historic buildings and monuments, which led him to become the artistic director of La España artística y monumental (1842-1850), a publishing project for which he supplied drawings and watercolours for reproduction as lithographs. Related lithographs are also displayed along with drawings and watercolours by the artist and paintings by Roberts.
Summary information about the Diptych’s restoration can be found online here.
Accompanied by a catalogue.

Juan Muñoz, Milan

Exhibition:
Juan Muñoz (1953-2001): Double Bind and Around
Hangar Bicocca, Milan
9 April – 23 August 2015
Curated by Vicente Todoli, this is the first exhibition about the Spanish sculptor in Italy. It reconstructs his installation Double Bind, shown in Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall in 2001.
Exhibition booklet available as a PDF via the exhibition web page.

Alfredo Ramos Martinez, Los Angeles

Exhibition:
Alfredo Ramos Martinez (1872-1946): An exhibition in honour of Maria Martinez Bolster
Louis Stern Fine Arts, Los Angeles
30 April – 11 July 2015

A display of drawings and paintings by the Mexican artist who having trained in Paris was made head of the National Academy in Mexico City in 1913, where he supervised the enrollment of the young muralist David Siqueiros amongst others and influenced the Modernist artist Rufino Tamayo. The works on show are from the 1930s and 1940s when Ramos Martinez had settled in Los Angeles, whilst he was seeking medical assistance for his young daughter crippled with a bone disease, though the imagery is inspired by the Mexican landscape and people. The Louis Stern Galleries represents the artist’s estate.

Joaquín Torres-García retrospective, New York

Forthcoming exhibition
Joaquín Torres-García
Museum of Modern Art, New York
October 25, 2015–February 15, 2016

Works ranging from the late 19th century to the 1940s, and includes drawings, paintings, objects, sculptures, and original artist notebooks and rare publications will be on show.

Jaume Plensa: Venice Biennale 2015

Jaume Plensa. Together
Basilica di San Giorgio Maggiore, Venice
7 May – 22 November 2015

A quartet of new installations by one of Spain’s leading sculptors the Catalan-born Jaume Plensa, displayed in the Palladian church of San Giorgio Maggiore as part of the Venice Biennale. The display Together, curated by Clare Lilley, Director of Programmes at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, creates a ‘conversation’ between two sculpted heads above which, hanging from the Basilica’s dome, is suspended a hand formed from letters of eight different alphabets. Another sculpture, placed in the nave, and drawings related to the installations will be shown at the Fondazione Cini’s library, in its “Nuova Manica Lunga“.

Picasso/Dalí, Dalí/Picasso: Barcelona

Exhibition:
Picasso/Dalí, Dalí/Picasso
Museu Picasso, Barcelona
20 March-28 June 2015

Exhibition organized by the Barcelona museum and the Dalí Museum, St Petersburg, Florida to explore the mutual admiration and rivalry between these two key figures in twentieth-century art. Art works and documents from the time reveal the counterpoints and contradictions throughout their relationship, from their first meeting in the 1920s, when Dalí visited Picasso’s studio after making his first avant-garde forays, through the 1930s and their friendships with leading intellectuals―André Breton, Paul Éluard and Georges Bataille―through to their opposing positions following the Spanish Civil War.
Accompanied by catalogue.

Michel Leiris, Metz

Exhibition:

Leiris & Co: Picasso, Masson, Miró, Giacometti, Lam, Bacon. . .
Centre Pompidou, Metz, France
3 April – 14 September 2015

A cross-disciplinary exhibition focusing on Michel Leiris, the writer, anthropologist, bull-fighting aficionado, and Africanist curator at the Musée de l’Homme, who formed friendships with artists such as Picasso and Miró amongst others.
The exhibition of nearly 350 items encompasses a wide range of works from Raymond Roussel to Pablo Picasso that stem from Africa, the Caribbean, Spain, Cuba and China, resulting in a web of links between writing, painting, jazz and opera, trance and bullfighting, voodoo and Ethiopian possession rites.
Accompanied by a catalogue jointly published by Pompidou-Metz and Éditions Gallimard.
Symposium, organised in cooperation with Musée du Quai Branly, Paris: Metz and Paris,10-11 September 2015.